Daniel Lee's Blog

http://www.marketing-interactive.com/news/19374

As I was mindlessly surfing the web while drinking my Starbucks latte, I saw an interesting article about the coffee brand I loved so much. “Starbucks Blends Coffee with Fashion” describes the fashion show and the launch party Starbucks held for it’s “Black is Chill this Summer” promotion. It seems Starbucks is using the color black as there marketing ideal and has actually hired fashion designers to custom design black clothes for their own fashion show. Furthermore, Starbucks has added new items to their shops – such as baked goods containing black sesame seed. I was amazed at how much Starbucks has grown up until now. This type of campaign proves that Starbucks has climbed over just the regular coffee shop and has become something so much bigger. Like the article suggests, among our generation, Starbucks has become a lifestyle or a statement of themselves. By using a fashion show to promote it’s new campaign, Starbucks is telling the world that the brand has now become an icon in this society and also is fit for this generation, which puts a lot of emphasis on trend and fashion. It seems that at this rate, Starbucks will continue to grow and build an empire that will be more than just about a good cup of black coffee.

http://marketing.about.com/od/viralmarketing/a/createbuzz.htm

In this day and age where everyone is so connected to with each other, the power of buzz marketing is something that cannot be ignored. Due to the human nature of wanting to spread information amongst each other, mouth to mouth marketing has become something many companies pay extra attention to. Even in the stock market, mouth-to-mouth rumours play a great role in whether the companies’ stocks go up or down in price. This type of marketing is extremely effective since people are accustomed to making a decision after listening to a review or an opinion from the people around them – whether it would be a friend of theirs or a trusted colleague. In order for a mouth to mouth marketing to be successful, you need to create a good impression on the people who test out the product and also make it more accessible to the public. When you see companies handing out their products on the streets and parks, they are trying to create a positive mouth to mouth network. This article called the “Marketing Power of Buzz” gives you tips on how to add positive buzz to your marketing plan. The article states that in order to create a positive buzz network, you must brainstorm all possible groups of people that might be interested in your product and also figure out the ways on how they receive information. So those people who call you to survey and ask random questions? It seems that most of them are trying to research on how to effectively create their buzz market. It’s amazing how much a few simple words to your friend can impact a whole company or even the economy of our society.

It seems facebook has taken over the better part of our entire world. What started as a small profile service that could not overcome MySpace and its mainstream pages for musicians, facebook has become a monolith of an empire that now plays a part of everything. If you closely think about it, due the freedom of creating profiles and the wide variety of pages, what doesn’t have a facebook page these days? Starting from the profile of your next door neighbor’s cat to a group about a couple of high school kids complaining about the uselessness of planning 12 classes, facebook has become a melting pot of variety all mixed into one. It didn’t take long for the brilliant business minds to incorporate facebook into their companies. Now, almost every major companies have their own facebook page, offering interactive flash, exclusive coupons, and a way to connect with other customers who have interest for a certain brand. I myself have pressed the “like” button on many of these business facebook pages and have realized how effective they are. They give your company a sense of brand and by gathering more members onto the page, the profile eventually creates a brand engagement for your business. Furthermore, I also believe that a facebook page for your business is an excellent way to introduce it to a bigger market. What better way to advertise your business to a wide variety of people than to put it on a social network that is bound by millions of people all over the world? I know that if I start a business, you can be sure that you’ll see it’s page on the top news feed of your facebook account.

http://marketing-expert.blogspot.com/2011/03/marketing-through-partnerships.html

I have just read an interesting blog called “Marketing through Partnership” by Michael Fleischner, who have raised some interesting points and gave some meaningful advice that got me thinking about the whole concept of marketing and how it can be effective done. The blog talks about marketing with a partner and Michael talks from experience how marketing isn’t something that can be done alone. He then goes into detail about how no matter how good a product is or how much effort you put in, it all becomes worthless if you cannot find a good partner who can spread your product to a vast area of potential buyers. Finally, he gives you an advice that seemed fairly accurate – he talks of finding partners that will sincerely be looking out for you and someone how has had a meaningful relationship to your for a long period of time. If that is not the situation, even sharing the profit 50/50 will be better for you in the long run then going by yourself. As I think of the world around me, it seemed true that having a partnership that can really get your product out there is a big factor to success. For example today, I was at Starbucks and saw a free iTunes song card. By curiosity, I took one and used it to download a song and I realized how clear the quality of iTunes songs was and how convenient it was for me to transfer it to my song. By having that card at Starbucks, Apple has led me to their product and now I think I will be using iTunes to purchase my songs.

(https://blogs.ubc.ca/gogumath/2011/02/10/public-campaign-advertisement/)

Like every other people reading this blog right now, I watch TV from time to time. Sure commercials and message ads are not what I turn on the tube to watch, but when it’s jammed between my favorite shows, I usually have no choice but to watch. There sure seems to be a lot of message ads warning about cigarettes and drinking and driving on TV. Despite being so many of them, none of them really grabbed my attention or stayed in my mind. After the gruesome images or daunting music stopped playing, it left my mind as soon as it entered – which was five seconds of air time or so. After reading Tae- Hoons blog about the ads of drunk driving, smoking and fire accidents, I must say I completely agree with him on most points. All the commercials are too bland, I mean bland in the way that they lack originality and has nothing that really connects with people’s lives right now. We see the same drunk driving commercial since we were around eight years old, a person is drunk and grabs the keys and some daunting music comes on and he dies in the crash. My initial reaction was “That’s horrible!”, but that reaction can only last so long. After watching it over and over, the effect is dissolved. Another prime example is the national movement on cigarettes. It seems that cigarette boxes now contain a picture of diseased lungs or brains or a person smoking. I am positive it was meant to scare off smokers, but now people just ask for a pack with a different picture on it. If an ad is meant to shock people and get them to reflect, it must have an angle that must strike deep into the people’s mind. That’s why when I saw the video of the Brazilian drunk driving awareness video, only one word came to my mind – brilliant. The video doesn’t incorporate ominous music or a dark special effect to the footage, it uses a real life situation and gets people to relate drunk driving to the one thing that everyone cherishes – money. By listing the cost of drunk driving in details, people can feel the money slipping out of their pockets and it reaches to them because they can relate losing money. I believe that in this day and age of media, the way we present our information is just as important as the information itself.

It seems that everyone has an I phone these days, whether it’s my friend, my professor or even my grandparents. Everyone all over the nation is going crazy, doing  face time with everything that owns the “coveted” I phone. Why is the I phone so popular and what is it that makes the people go crazy during the launch season? Many competitors also have impressive phones, but no one seems to pitch a tent outside the store and wait ten hours for it. After many pondering and speculating, the answer was relatively simple. Apple, with all their brilliance, seems to have a basic marketing strategy that makes their products even more awe-struck than it actually is. Despite the hordes of Apple fan boys that scour the internet for a sample picture of Apple products and pre order their phone months ahead, Apple seems to limit the stock of Iphone that gets shipped. Even after knowing how many people would sell their kid’s educational funds to get their hands on an Iphone at release date, Apple only sells limited numbers in order to maintain the people’s need for the product. By employing such strategy, Apple drives people into a near frenzy for their products. If Apple operated like other companies and shipped large stock of phones so that every customer would get one, people’s desire would be satisfied all too easily and it would not create a need in the people’s mind. Apple, being the brilliant and cruel company they are, successfully uses basic human tendencies to make their product more appealing.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/immin03/2011/02/03/scent-marketing/

Min Woo Choi’s blog post on “Scent Marketing”

This was a very interesting blog about the types of marketing that is around us. Although I was aware, I never really thought about the effects of scent marketing and emotion marketing. However, when I think about it, I do realize how much scent marketing has an effect on a potential customer. I remember walking past a bakery in Korea and smelling freshly baked bread because the door of the bakery was wide open. Despite not being very hungry when I left, I found myself going into the bakery and buying a piece of bread. In addition, I remember how Sam and Bud Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, employed scent marketing when they were first starting out as a small grocery store. Instead of having their popcorn machine inside the store, they had the popcorn machine outside their store so the smell would attract customers. This way, they would come to buy the popcorn and also enter the store since they were already there. I think this is a very unique but highly effective way of marketing.

Hi,

Today I will talk about the firms having contract with popular stars to create positive brand images. Firms usually search for popular stars who fits their brand image. Sports firms such as adidas brings sports stars such as Michael Ballack, a famous German soccer player, and Kevin Garnett, Timber Wolves basketball player. These sports players gives adidas an image that wearing the product will make you play better.

However, when sports stars creates trouble, such as scandals firms might be worried about decrease in sale. One popular example was Tiger Woods and the Nike Golf products.  Tiger Woods sex scandal, cheating on his wife and having relationship with several other women, was one of the most shocking scandals in 2009. Having this scandal, Nike worried about their damage in sales in their Golf products which Tiger Woods have been advertised.

In this way, it is very likely that popular stars image is perceived as its brand image when they start to advertise on certian product, so firms have to be really careful who to choose and think about the consequences that they could get from the star when his or her image is harmed.

When launching a product internationally, it is good to bring up the nation’s popular stars to their product so that the people in that nation is more attracted to their items. For example, Didier Drogba, a famous Ivory Coast player in Chealsea, Samuel Eto’o Cameroon star player will be nice  when Nike or Adidas wants to sell their product in Africa . Thanks !

Hi guys,

Today I want to talk about marketing strategy of clubs and its promotion teams.

Most of us (I believe) have went to nightclubs to dance, to hangout with friends, and to meet new people.

I personally love clubbing because I love to dance, and I personally have friends who plan and lauch events in clubs

Looking at the posters of events that promoter teams sets up almost every week, I found out some interesting advantages.

It was that some of the time females can enter for free if they come by 2’s or if they wear the dresscode that promotion team

has set up It is very interesting and creative strategy, as I perceive it. By indirectly stating “females are free” It comes to mind that

there will be a lot of females coming because they are free. By doing this they sell many of their tickets to their target segment

which are the males who wants to meet new people and seeking for relationship. This is also a good strategy because most of the

time it is males who buy drinks, and by bringing many females more drinks they are able to sell.

In addition, These events creates an affective image of promotion team, because by making females free

first females are more likely to go to these events because they feel “special” that they are free to come, and second they get to have

more attentions to the same promotion team more often to see if they have similar events.

By creating these kind of events, they were able to collect multiple female customers who are willing to come anytime, plus all the

male customers expecting to get into a new relationships.

Overall, I believe that this is a good strategy; although it give up some revenues (the ticket price for females), promotion team gets

profitable by collecting  many customers who are actually willing to spend some money.

Hi, everyone. I personally love football and I am a big fan of Manchester United in English Premier League. The reason why I became a fan of Man U is because of Park Ji Sung, A famous and the first Korean English Premier League player. It was a very big proud for me that he plays for one of the BIG 4 team in the England league playing with one of the top players in the field. I believe that the Manchester United had a successful marketing strategy on creating millions of fans support their team in Asia by scouting some of top Asian players, which creates a feeling of proud and love for the team. Huge increase of Korean fans in Manchester United after the Park’s transfer is one of the examples. Manchester successfully sold almost 400% more of their merchandise here in Korea after scouting park, and by showing picture of park training with top players such as Wayne Rooney or Rio Ferdinand, they made issues that caught attention of many people. 3 years ago Manchester United also visited Korea for friendly match, and by doing so they have created friendly feeling towards Asians, which also helped creating more fans. I find this marketing strategy very interesting; by paying attention to potential players in Asia and scouting them to their squad, they brought attention of countries other than Europe and created fans all over the world.